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MMORPG.com Warhammer Online Correspondent Bao Huynh writes this editorial discussing his experiences with the first four camps on the Blighted Isle in Mythic Entertainment's Warhammer Online.

For every MMORPG that gets released, there has always been the role playing game element of starting your character out in a lowbie area. In these lowbie areas, doing small things with a very small arsenal of offensive weapons became the norm since the release of EverQuest (I did not include UO since it was not a level based system). In Neriak (a Dark Elf starting zone in EQ), you started off fighting bugs and spiders progressing your way to more enthralling mobs. I've seen this evolve through the years from games like EQ where fighting noobie mobs took a good amount of time for a character to get to the good graphical looking mobs. Sometimes it would take weeks to get out of a noobie area like this setting in EQ. I can still hear the obsessive clicking sounds of the bugs crawling around Neriak due to long amounts of time it took to get out of those areas.

However, in WAR, as things remain somewhat the same in beginning areas, there are some distinctions in lowbie area game play. With the evolution of MMOs using quests to level (vs. mob grinding), WAR has also adapted this style of play, though the mechanics are not revolutionary per say. Although, I've noticed much more of an immersive world right at the start of the game. Yes there were the a-typical lowbie mobs to fight, but WAR also did a good job bringing the experienced player into fights that were not reminiscent of starting areas in other MMORPGs.

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I have been pleased with the starting areas in this game in that I have not yet felt like I was doing something tedious. Even in those noob zones in which I had already made characters and knew my way around I never felt like I was "grinding on rats."

I have made characters in the Greenskin, Dark Elf, Chosen, and High Elf areas and I have been pleased with each. I have to say though that the Greenskin one takes the cake in so far as immersing you into the experience. If I had to guess I would say _alot_ of love went into the Greenskin areas. Not that none was spread to the other areas of the game but, to me at least, the Greenskin starting area really out shines the rest. Getting thrown in a lobber to the top of a dwarf fortress? That is a good MMO moment right there folks.

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Nice article. There was one other element regarding how WAR treats noobie players that deserves mentioning. At no time whatsoever will your low level character ever, EVER be forced to look like they're wearing a clown costume because they have lowbie gear.

There are -some- games that seem to think it's cute to punish noobie players by making them wear the stupidiest-looking gear. One could imagine the developers think this is 'incentive' to get their players to higher level but the fact is everyone is getting to higher level anyway! That's what happens to you play the game so why bother making players look moronic at low levels? WAR doesn't do that to players.

Sure a low level WAR character won't look kick-butt or impressive. They'll be rather plain in fact. But at no time will they be forced to look stupid because the only decent gear they can get is some puke green armor, lavender boots and a ship's wheel for a shield.

(Of course, -some- games even make higher level players look stupid unless they can waste hours raiding the armor sets just so the raid-monkeys can show off how great they are at spending hours farming and spamming buttons)

It's amusing to see how -some- games have put out expansions where the noobie players of their expansion races were actually given decent-looking gear until they had to leave their starter zones and go back to the color-blind clown costumes for the rest of the game.

WAR partly has GamesWorkshop's attention to their IP for that. Nobody in Warhammer looks like a clown, unless its an evil psycho chaos clown that eats children. And WAR partly has Mythic to thank for that, since they were bright enough to realize that there's no reason why a game should be any less enjoyable at a lower rank compared to a higher.

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I just had an amazing experience in Tier 2 doing Open world RvR across three pairings with a full warband, taking two keeps, and ending up with a 40+ vs. 40+ battle that pushed forward and backward for a good 30 minutes over a keep.

Boiling Oil, Balistas, Cannons, etc. It was amazing, and I gained more renown in an hour doing Open world RvR than I did in 2-3 hours doing Scenarios.

---------------------------------------------I live to fight, and fight to live.

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The author shares my sentiments on how I fealt first starting off. At level 20 on my first character, I still had that feeling. However, you get that been there done that feeling if you ever reroll in that racial area again. This is no different that other MMORPGs, only Mythic gives you a variety of gameplay options to help you level if you don't want to repeat the same quests again. They also made traveling to other racial areas easy.

After a few weeks of playing, I finally settled on a character. I'm stil having a blast playing the game, because each class makes the game feel a little different. Mainly because I PvP mostly, so every class really does make the game different.

MMORPG's w/ Max level characters: DAoC, SWG, & WoW

Currently Playing: WARPreferred Playstyle: Roleplay/adventurous, in a sandbox game.

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* A Latin phrase used in English arguments for "by itself" or "by themselves"

It also is used in law:

* Illegal per se, the legal usage of "per se" in criminal and anti-trust law
* Negligence per se, legal use in tort law

Grammar Police. Cooler then caps lock.

It's "than". Using "then" makes it sound like caps lock comes after "Cooler" in some sequence other than the sentence you wrote which doesn't make sense (at least to me at this moment).

It may be "hip" or "cool" to make fun of people being "grammar police" and all but, well...I guess I would rather be labeled that THAN be looked at as someone who can't speak/write my native language correctly. I guess I missed the memo/email of when intelligence stopped being a good thing.

"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."

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Originally posted by checkthis500

I just had an amazing experience in Tier 2 doing Open world RvR across three pairings with a full warband, taking two keeps, and ending up with a 40+ vs. 40+ battle that pushed forward and backward for a good 30 minutes over a keep.

Boiling Oil, Balistas, Cannons, etc. It was amazing, and I gained more renown in an hour doing Open world RvR than I did in 2-3 hours doing Scenarios.

Open RvR seems to be the way to get Reknown while Scenarios give out the big chunks of XP.

The only problem with open RvR is that it's much more organic. Not only do you have to wait for players to start doing it like Scenarios but you have to be able to figure out where it's occuring.

As long as the bulk of players are still leveling their characters then Scenarios will be huge draws. But as more people hit the Rank cap, I expect we'll be seeing the Open World RvR really blossom. Particularly because people will be funneling into the T4 zones rather than spread out over all four zones. RvR will occur more often, it will be easier to access since the RvR lakes make up larger areas of the T4 zones and so more people will do it. Hmmm, it's almost like someone planned it or something :)

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Originally posted by Alienovrlord

Nice article. There was one other element regarding how WAR treats noobie players that deserves mentioning. At no time whatsoever will your low level character ever, EVER be forced to look like they're wearing a clown costume because they have lowbie gear.

There are -some- games that seem to think it's cute to punish noobie players by making them wear the stupidiest-looking gear. One could imagine the developers think this is 'incentive' to get their players to higher level but the fact is everyone is getting to higher level anyway! That's what happens to you play the game so why bother making players look moronic at low levels? WAR doesn't do that to players.

Sure a low level WAR character won't look kick-butt or impressive. They'll be rather plain in fact. But at no time will they be forced to look stupid because the only decent gear they can get is some puke green armor, lavender boots and a ship's wheel for a shield.

(Of course, -some- games even make higher level players look stupid unless they can waste hours raiding the armor sets just so the raid-monkeys can show off how great they are at spending hours farming and spamming buttons)

It's amusing to see how -some- games have put out expansions where the noobie players of their expansion races were actually given decent-looking gear until they had to leave their starter zones and go back to the color-blind clown costumes for the rest of the game.

WAR partly has GamesWorkshop's attention to their IP for that. Nobody in Warhammer looks like a clown, unless its an evil psycho chaos clown that eats children. And WAR partly has Mythic to thank for that, since they were bright enough to realize that there's no reason why a game should be any less enjoyable at a lower rank compared to a higher.

Well put. A great point that was not included.

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Originally posted by checkthis500

I just had an amazing experience in Tier 2 doing Open world RvR across three pairings with a full warband, taking two keeps, and ending up with a 40+ vs. 40+ battle that pushed forward and backward for a good 30 minutes over a keep.

Boiling Oil, Balistas, Cannons, etc. It was amazing, and I gained more renown in an hour doing Open world RvR than I did in 2-3 hours doing Scenarios.

What server and what time did you play ?

Main complaint i'm hearing is not enough players are on to do RvR or Public Quests.